I don't get it either. The difference is i couldn't give a flying rat's arse about any of the religions so i just sit happily in ignorance
I think many of us are indifferent to/anti-religious. So why should we sing about a 'Yid Army' - I have a lot of problems with the teachings of the Old Testament, which is the cornerstone of the Jewish faith. (Some of the stuff in there would make the 'politically correct' peeps of today very unhappy, yet many Jewish and indeed other religious people believe in this stuff, or at least pay lip service to it.) I'm not anti-Jewish, but I'm not pro-Jewish either. Now I would happily walk down the High Road singing 'Language, Truth and Logic' and 'One Freddie Ayer' in honour of our most intellectually distinguished and incidentally atheist supporter. Now that ain't going to catch on I know, but I'm not walking down the High Road singing in favour of a faith that I don't have an affinity with. First and foremost we are English, but of course we can't walk down the High Road singing about 'St George' (not that I'd want to being an atheist) because you can imagine how that would end up When I first started going in the 60s we didn't sing about Jewish affinities, we sang 'Glory Glory Hallejuah' (strong Christian rather than Jewish influence) and 'McNamara's Band', ( strong Irish influence) obviously with Spurs-related lyrics.
I'm a white Englishman.You can call me what you want so long as you call me for breakfast,lunch and dinner!
I'm...let me just double check: English, Welsh, Romany, Spanish, Irish, with obvious Germanic/Nordic DNAS. So basically I'm a guaranteed pub argument combined with the Daily Mail's worst fears.
And if we had 22 balls on the pitch they wouldn't have to fight over it. The problem in this particular case is that "Yid" is not in fact an offensive word. It means Jew, and is (mostly was) used by Jews to mean fellow Jew. Reb Yid is/was a respectful term of address. The fact that assholes have tried to use yid as an offensive word does not change the fact that it isn't. It's insane. If enough people yell "American" at me with demonstrably bad intent, does that make it a racist term? And will organizations then step in to prevent me from calling myself an American because I'm using an offensive term? Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Superbly written letter but Baddiel won't listen to reason as there is clearly another agenda behind this.
Great points RWB. Lots of people do find 'Americans' ie Yanks to be offensive, it's the way it is. Hilariously a lot of the 'anti-imperialist, USA is bad' brigade spend a lot of time watching Hollywood films, American TV etc. I have pointed this out to some of them, but the inherent contradictions don't seem to sink in.
One thing that gets me is how Australians think that calling somebody a [shortened term for Pakistani] isn't offensive, because calling somebody an Aussie isn't offensive, and get all angry about the word in question being censored from repeats of Only Fools And Horses. Then again, Australians don't seem to find anything offensive about this product that is on the market over there... please log in to view this image
Brilliant letter/article. Should be circulated to all those getting on their high horse about this, and redirecting them to the actual areas of racism.
This Aussie forum also find nothing offensive in the name they've chose to describe a food genre. http://www.netrider.net.au/threads/favourite-wog-food.154026/
What is offensive is very subjective; it depends on meaning, context, culture, tone, intention and lots of other variables. If someone said I was as impressive as an X Factor contestant I'd be mortally wounded. Most would be flattered. There will always be someone who feels offended for any number of different reasons. But in this country we think that we can pass laws to regulate everything, even human emotions. Barmy.
In Australia, a wog is somebody of Italian origin...which doesn't say much for Australian diction, given the rest of the English-speaking world uses the term "wop" instead. There was a bit of a kerfuffle a few years ago when this came up on an episode of Neighbours, and Channel 5 aired it uncut.
Its a bit more far reaching than just Italians hbic, asians, africans, east europeans, south americans...the lot basically, most of the 'Urban Dictionaries' say pretty much that. Kebabs, pizza's, curries, stir-fries, are all w-- food to an Aussie.
Adam Hills got a few eyebrows raised over here when he told people he presents a show called "Spicks and Specks" over in Australia.
